Time：4:00-5:30 PM, Thursday, November 7，2024

    Host：Dr. Xiaofei Gao, Principal Investigator, School of Life Sciences

    Venue：Room E10-222, Yungu Campus  

Speaker:

Dr. Michel Sadelain, Professor,Founding Director of the Center for Cell Engineering at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC); Head of the Gene Transfer and Gene Expression Laboratory

Michel Sadelain received his M.D. from the University of Paris and his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta. Following his post-doctoral research at the Whitehead Institute(MIT), he joined MSK in 1994. In MSK, Dr. Sadelain’s research focuses on human cell engineering and cell therapy to treat cancer. His laboratory has made several seminal contributions to the field of chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), from design to clinical translation. For his outstanding contributions, he has been honored with numerous international awards including: Canada Gairdner International Award (2024), The Warren Alpert Foundation Prize (2024) and Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2024).

Abstract:

As a pioneer in CAR-T therapy,  Dr. Sadelain has brought revolutionary changes to cancer treatment: successfully using retroviral vectors to genetically engineer T cells; being the first to introduce the CD28 co-stimulatory domain into the CAR structure, designing the "second-generation" CAR,  establishing the feasibility of CAR-T cell therapy; being the first to prove that the CD19 molecule found on the surface of blood cells can serve as an effective target for CAR-T cells, advancing clinical trials for CAR-T cell therapy, achieving significant therapeutic effects. mammals.

Dr. Sadelain continues to deepen the understanding of CAR-T cell therapy, including improving the antigen sensitivity of CAR-T cells, developing new strategies to regulate CAR-T activation with logic gating, and using CRISPR technology to enhance the potency, durability, and safety of CAR-T cells. These efforts aim to surmount resistance mechanisms conferred by tumor cells and their microenvironment, thereby broadening the applicability of CAR-T cell therapy across a spectrum of cancer types.

Contact：

Wenyue Yu: yuwenyue@westlake.edu.cn

School of Life Sciences